"'Extant' is a mystery thriller about a female astronauttrying to reconnect with her family when she returns after a year in outer space," CBS officials announced this month. "Her experiences lead to events that ultimately will change the course of human history." The series will premiere July 2.The Hollywood Reporter adds that Stephen Spielberg is producing the show and ER's Luka (Goran Visnjic) will play Halle's husband.

I hope it's good -- I'm a big sci fi fan. And I hope it's a success.

Halle deserves one and would be great if Kerry Washington wasn't the only woman of color carrying an hour long drama (there were two when Maggie Q was playing Nikita but that show ended).

There's Lucy Lui who co-carries CBS' Elementary. But Kerry's the only woman of color right now carrying a show all by herself.

(There's also the African-American actress on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow co-carrying a show.)

Thursday, January 30, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, over 1000
violent deaths since the start of Nouri's assault on Anbar, two
government ministries are attacked in Baghdad, Americans agree the Iraq
War produced no measurable success, and much more.

The Pew-USA Today poll is covered by Susan Page (USA Today).
Her breakdown includes, "On Iraq, Americans by 52%-37% say the United
States mostly failed to
achieve its goals. That is a decidedly more negative view than in
November 2011, when U.S. combat troops withdrew. Then, by 56%-33%, those
surveyed said the U.S. had mostly succeeded." It was an illegal war
and it was an unpopular war. Public opinion turned on it firmly in the
summer of 2005. That is also when Cindy Sheehan
staged her first Camp Casey outside Bully Boy Bush's Crawford, Texas
ranchette. Camp Casey was named after Cindy's son Casey who died
serving in Iraq.

The illegal war accomplished little -- if anything -- worth praising. AFP notes, "Violence has killed at least 917 people in Iraq
this month, more than three times the toll for January 2013, according
to an AFP tally based on reports from security and medical officials." AFP's Prashant Rao Tweets:

Good for AFP for keeping their count but the gold-standard of non-governmental figures isn't AFP.
Through yesterday, Iraq Body Count
counts 1037 violent deaths in Iraq so far this month. That leaves
today's numbers and Friday's number before a final count for the month.

Nouri al-Maliki's assault on Anbar Province didn't stop the violence.

UPI insists,
"Iraqi forces regained control of parts of two cities overrun by
militants aligned with al-Qaida after intense fighting that's killed
850, officials said." But to support that claim, all UPI offers is
control of al-Nasaf ("on the western outskirts of Fallujah"). I'm
sorry, is that considered good?

Because when the assault started at the end of December, militias controlled no parts of Iraq.

Since he started his assault, Nouri's lost territory. Even if he regains it, he lost it to begin with.

Press TV reports, "Officials say Iraqi forces have
retaken control of key areas in west Baghdad from militants amid a
deadly standoff between militants and security forces."Retaken.And note that the Baghdad areas were not "taken" until after Nouri started his assault on Anbar Province.Nouri al-Maliki is a crook and tyrant but, even worse, he's a jinx.Everything he does backfires.

Baghdad -- where not one but two ministries were attacked today. Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) points out, "But despite those modest gains, the city of Fallujah remains more or
less entirely under AQI control, as well as much of Ramadi. The rest of
the Anbar Province is largely in open revolt, with Sunni tribal leaders
opposed to the Maliki government’s heavy-handed treatment of them."

That's one of Nouri's victims today -- injured by his forces shelling Falluja. NINA reports
that hospitals have received 141 civilians have been killed in Ramadi
and Falluja alone this month with another 509 injured and: "He added that
this can not be considered as final number because there are dead and
wounded in areas which could not be moved to the hospital." Through
yesterday, Iraq Body Count
counts 1037 violent deaths in Iraq so far this month. It's doubtful
many counts will include the 141 civilians killed by the bombings and
shellings from Nouri's forces. NINA also notes military shelling left 3 civilians dead in Ramadi with eight more injured.

Under
the 1949 Geneva Conventions, collective punishments are a war crime.
Article 33 of the Fourth Convention states: “No protected person may be
punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed,” and
“collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of
terrorism are prohibited.” Israel, however, does not accept that the
Fourth Geneva Convention or the Additional Protocols apply to the West
Bank de jure, but says it abides by the humanitarian provisions without
specifying what the humanitarian provisions are.

By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World Wars I and II. In the First World War, Germans executed
Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity. In World
War II, Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress
resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible
for any resistance activity that took place there. The conventions, to
counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility. The
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Commentary to the
conventions states that parties to a conflict often would resxort to
“intimidatory measures to terrorize the population” in hopes of
preventing hostile acts, but such practices “strike at guilty and
innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and
justice.”The law of armed
conflict applies similar protections to an internal conflict. Common
Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 requires fair trials
for all individuals before punishments; and Additional Protocol II of
1977 explicitly forbids collective punishment.

Nouri's assault of Anbar was supposed to (a) deal with 'terrorists,' (b) be a swift operation and (c) demonstrate Nouri's skill.

In fact, (a) it's left many civilians dead, injured and homeless (over
150,000 people have fled their homes -- they better not try to flee to
Baghdad since the military is preventing anyone entering Baghdad from Anbar),
(b) it started the last week of December and it's ongoing with no clear
end in sight and (c) he lost control of Falluja, Ramadi, other parts of
Anbar and also of Baghdad.

Skill?

The assault on Anbar has actually demonstrated that Nouri has no problem
targeting civilians, that he utilizes collective punishment (an
international recognized War Crime), that he's inept as well as
criminal.

Nouri's making promises in order to get a peaceful conclusion to the
violence he initiated. The answer, Nouri feels, is largely getting
Sahwa to control Anbar. Sahwa in Anbar are Sunni fighters. Loveday Morris (Washington Post via Arizona Star) reports:To bring them on board, al-Maliki has recently said there is no limit
on arming and equipping tribal fighters. Government spokesman Ali
al-Moussawi said the Iraqi Cabinet has approved $3.4 million for
tribesmen and more than $17 million for infrastructure projects in
Anbar. “We are supplying them with more weapons and whatever they need,”
he said. ﻿But promises to incorporate fighters from the
Awakening into the state security forces failed to materialize after the
U.S. withdrawal. Facing cuts in salaries and threats from the al-Qaida
militants they had fought, numbers dwindled to fewer than half the more
than 100,000 men who made up the movement at its peak.

The Sahwa are Iraqis (largely Sunni -- but not just Sunni according to
then-Gen David Petraeus' testimony to Congress in April 2008) who were
paid to stop attacking the US military and their equipment. April 8, 2008, Senator Barbara Boxer noted they were being paid $182 million a year by US tax payers.
Nouri was supposed to pay them, he was supposed to integrate them --
mainly into the security forces but to find government jobs for those
not integrated into the security forces. The US government continued to
pay a large number of Sahwas through 2010 as a result of Nouri's
repeated refusals to pay the Sahwa. In addition to failing to find them
jobs and failing to pay them, Nouri also began issuing arrest warrants
for various Sahwa members and leaders.

And now he wants to be their friend and they just may be stupid to fall
for that. But the reality is Nouri needs them right now so he will
promise them anything. The thing about Nouri's promises though, they
never seem to stick. His word is worthless. If pattern holds, he'll
use the Sahwa to get some form of resolution to the crisis he kicked off
and then he'll kick them to the curb.

The Iraqi government is facing not just one serious crisis
but several. In less than a month the way that Iraqi Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki has reacted to various disputes in the country has
unleashed a series of crises. He has passed a national budget that is
unacceptable to many including the Iraqi Kurdish and Iraqi oil
producers, he has angered the heads of a number of provinces and sparked
violent clashes in Sunni Muslim provinces by dispersing demonstrations
in Anbar.

To many, it seems that al-Maliki believes that the best way to respond to these crises is just to create another.

“The
'creation of crises' really is the best description of the political
situation in Iraq over the past four years,” Ninawa's governor, Sunni
Muslim politician Atheel al-Nujaifi, told NIQASH. “It's brought the
country to the brink of civil war more than once. I believe that the
Iraqi people cannot cope with any more crises – especially because there
really is no clear strategy for the future that might give them even a
little hope.”

Yes, that does describe Nouri, lurching from one crisis to another. He
lacks leadership skills as well as intelligence. Remember the attack on
Anbar is really an attack on protesters. Al Arabiya News observes:Protests broke out in Sunni Arab-majority areas of Iraq in late 2012
after the arrest of guards of then-finance minister Rafa al-Essawi, an
influential Sunni Arab politician, on terrorism charges.The arrests were seen by Iraqi Sunnis as yet another example of the Shiite-led government targeting one of their leaders.

But
the demonstrations have tapped into deeper grievances, with Sunnis
saying they are both marginalized by the Shiite-led government and
unfairly targeted with heavy-handed tactics by security forces.

AFP notes,
"It is likely to raise fresh concerns about the capabilities of Iraq’s
security forces amid fears the April 30 general elections could be
partially delayed, as was the case for provincial elections in April
2013." Yes, AFP, we have repeatedly noted that here for weeks now.
Thanks for finally picking up on it. Prashant Rao re-Tweets his
boy-pal today letting the whole world laugh at him and AFP. Those late
to the party can refer to "A crackpot runs AFP, Al Jazeera and the Christian Science Monitor"
-- about how 'analyst' Reider Visser's half-baked analysis influenced
Prashant Rao and Jane Arraf thereby making their calls as wrong as
Visser's calls -- and while we'd long noted Visser didn't know what he
was talking back, it wasn't until that moment that we realized Vissar
had sanity issues -- he posted about how he was being followed around
the world, and disrupted in libraries, and the FBI was posing as the
State Dept and so much more.

The list of candidates will once again be vetted by the Justice and
Accountability Commission -- a body that was supposed to have done work
in 2005 and then vanished. But Nouri used them in 2010 to kick out
opponents.

The Jewish archive is a trove of Jewish artifacts which were stolen by
the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein. Since the 2003 invasion all
but a handful of Iraqi Jews have either left the country or been killed.
This didn't happen overnight. The current government did nothing to
protect the Jewish population but thinks they have a right to the Jewish
possessions. The White House insists that the archive must be returned
due to a contract with the Iraqi government. Stolen property can never
be contractually negotiated. You can only enter a legal contract over
property with someone who is the rightful owner. Yesterday, Ruth noted the Orthodox Union's press release on the issue:

For Immediate Release Contact:January 29, 2014 Roslyn Singer, 212-613-8227The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations
(OU), the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization,
commends Senators Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) for
introducing Senate Resolution 333, strongly recommending the United
States renegotiate the return of the Iraqi Jewish Archive to Iraq. The
OU also recognizes Senators Schumer, Kirk, Cardin, Rubio, Roberts,
Kaine, Boxer and Menendez for their co-sponsorship and support for this
important Senate Resolution.The Iraqi Jewish Archive is a trove of Jewish
holy books and communal documents rescued from the flooded basement of
Iraq’s intelligence building during the United States’ led ousting of
Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Archive, documenting 2,600 years of a
Jewish Iraqi history, contains more than 2,700 books and other Jewish
artifacts seized from oppressed Iraqi Jews and their institutions by
the Hussein regime during the 1970s and 1980s. Sent to Washington, D.C.,
for restoration and now on display at the Smithsonian Institute, the
Archive is scheduled to be returned to Iraq in June 2014 if no
immediate action is taken to change the terms of the initial agreement
with the Iraqi government.Nathan Diament, Executive Director for Public
Policy for the Orthodox Union voiced his personal concern: “Due to the
oppressive nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime, a once thriving Iraqi
Jewish community of more than 150,000 people was reduced to no more
than 60 persons by the time United States and coalition forces arrived
in Bagdad in 2003. While the Hussein regime is no longer in power,
these restored works documenting the Iraqi Jewish community, rightfully
belong to that community now living in diaspora around the world, not
the oppressive country from which they fled.The Orthodox Union thanks Senators Toomey and
Blumenthal for their leadership and urges the Senate to pass this
resolution in a timely manner.”

Yair Rosenberg (Tablet magazine) ends his article on the issue as follows:Today, there is almost no one left in Iraq to
appreciate the Torah scrolls fragments, kabbalistic works, and other
rare gems found in the collection. But outside Iraq, there is a thriving
Iraqi Jewish community in Israel and abroad. These descendants deserve
to have their possessions returned to them, or at least made readily
accessible, not put on display in a Baghdad museum where no Israeli can
safely visit.What happened to the members of Iraq’s venerable Jewish community was
a tragedy of profound proportions. Let’s not compound it by abandoning
the best historical witness to the lives they led, the treasures they
kept, and the world they lost.